


The Point Is

by Ayes



Category: Twilight RPF
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Male-Female Friendship, POV Robert, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 03:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12472232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayes/pseuds/Ayes
Summary: There are girls who love him and reach for his hair screaming, terrifying him just a little bit less each time, but still fucking scary. There are book fans who hate him for how he looks and moves, wish he was Gaspard Ulliel, wish he was dead. She's the only one who doesn't care at all, either way, and he loves her for that.





	The Point Is

There's a story that Rob knows about a bird that is dying of thirst. In the story the bird sees a beautiful painting of a bubbling stream, and throws itself through the air at its coolness. Of course, it dies, because the water was never there.  
  
The point, of course, is that you can't throw yourself too hard at anything, no matter how much you want it. The point is that it may have never been there in the first place. The _point_ , he thinks, is that it can kill you when you want something too bad.  
  
And he wants Kristen.  
  
There are girls who love him and reach for his hair screaming, terrifying him just a little bit less each time, but still fucking scary. There are book fans who hate him for how he looks and moves, wish he was Gaspard Ulliel, wish he was dead.  
  
She's the only one who doesn't care at all, either way, and he loves her for that.  
  
If it's fucked up to love someone for the way they don't care about you... well, she makes it an art. When he pushes his hair back, she doesn't even lift her eyes, and he studies the skin of her eyelids with something bordering obsession. When she pushes her fingers through her own hair, some part of him tightens up.  
  
When he flirts with Nikki, her best friend, she laughs along with him, enjoying their presence but never in awe of him. Which is good. Because to be honest, he's sick of people who think he never cuts himself shaving or forgets to open a door for a woman or gets too drunk and pukes on _everything_.  
  
He does all of those things  on Friday, and shuts the door in Kristen's face when she sees him home, and she stands banging on the door with her heels in her hand until he lets her in again.  
  
"I'm sorry I threw up in your car," he says, because he is. It's embarrassing on the worst level, and he knows he'll probably hate himself come morning, but right now he's just too tired to care. He needs to sleep.  
  
She tucks him in and he gets just, this little flash of the future. Of how it could be, and it could be easy, because he loves her already and he'd give her whatever she needed to be happy. He's drunk like only Englishmen get drunk, a showy and loud mess, and even now that he's emptied his stomach and crawled into bed, he can't help but start trouble.  
  
"I wish you cared about me," he says, too loud in the dark room. It comes out of nowhere, but she doesn't seem too surprised to hear it. Or maybe he just can't read her.  
  
"What?" she prods after a minute, and when she pushes some hair behind her ear he can see that she's chewing her downturned lip.  
  
"I wish you'd at least hate me," he explains. "A little." She pauses and recaps the Tylenol, puts the little bottle next to his glass of water.  
  
"I don't hate you."  
  
When he wakes up at the first light through the windows, feeling like hell, she isn't there anymore.  
  
Robert falls deeply in love with Kristen slowly but steadily, like sinking without the struggle. He feeds off of her presence in rooms and he brings so much to Edward's eyes onscreen that everyone thinks he's fucking amazing.  
  
He never brings up their cryptic conversation; she probably thinks he doesn't remember it. But he can still make her laugh and their chemistry is still there; he relaxes back into it, the easiness of being around her. She's tiny and often grumpy but when she laughs her whole face lights up and her buck teeth look normal. He almost tells her a few times that he fantasizes about her tiny ankles, that he likes the look of her in green, that she's his princess, but he keeps on wimping out. The hardest line is the one between friend and more, and from this side of it he can't tell if the other opportunity is even there.  
  
By March it's too late to say anything. Kristen and Michael get caught with their shirts off in her trailer when she's late for set, and he sulks for days about it. She's embarrassed to have been unprofessional, to have slipped the one time, so he never mentions it.  
He loves her humbly, and now he's prepared to never mention that either.  
  
He learns a new song on his piano when he isn't required in the US for filming, going over it slower and slower until he can burst into the quick notes without failure. He's honestly filling the hours he isn't working with anything busy he can. Things like music, and drinking cup after cup of coffee, and making long distance phone calls he hangs up before Kristen can answer them.  
  
He sees his friends, and plays a few shows, and starts sleeping with his ex-girlfriend again when he's in London for work. They smoke cigarettes in silence when the act is over, his blue eyes reflecting thick smoke and his ties never perfect by the time they walk out the door because he's always moving his hands, always moving his fingers. They twitch on his tie or dance over her legs like he's hearing notes in his head, and he never stops playing.  
  
He spends a lot of time in his mother's kitchen, reading the newspapers she's pulled into sections when she's done with them. She tells him stories, gossip, family secrets, burns his toast. She makes him wonder why he ever left home in the first place.  
  
Kristen calls when he's driving one day, and he pulls over and turns on his emergency flashers without thinking about it.  
  
"Hey, Kristen."  
  
"Uh, hey." He hears her swallow. Her voice is lower on the phone, but he doesn't mention it, knowing she'd be embarrassed. Their pause is tangible over thousands of miles, and then she reaches out and breaks it. "Mikey cheated on me."  
  
"Oh, no. I'm so sorry." He wonders why she called _him_ , if she called him _first_ , and then he knows that she did, and he knows why; he wouldn't pull the car over to give his full attention to anyone else's voice. She knows he's the one who will listen like she needs.  
  
She tells him that she just found out, that Michael confessed it to her so that they could stay together, but that she doesn't know if she wants to be with him when she still loves him but he can ignore her so easily. Rob listens the way he's meant to, makes appropriate noises, and ignores the cars that slow down to see what the hell he's doing on the side of the road. But he can be cruel when he can't see her eyes, and after she finishes being angry and rambles into sadness, he asks her why she called _him_.  
  
She doesn't respond for a minute, and he can hear her closing a cabinet, then pouring something into a bowl. A dog in the background. He thinks she didn't hear his question, but she breathes into the phone a moment later, and it's like she's sitting in the passenger seat, breathing in his ear.  
  
"I don't know," she finally says. He expected her to say that, of course, but it hurts worse than he anticipated.  
  
That night he stays up debating things. Nothing can be the same after this; he can't listen to the ups and downs of her relationship and not itch to get involved. Cheating on Kristen is unfathomable to him. He's wanted her since they met. If Kristen takes Michael back, he doesn't know what he'll do. But he definitely can't let her run back to Michael's arms without showing her that his are also open.  
  
Rob flies back to Washington earlier than he has to, to "get back into Edward's head," as he says, but Kristen's voice sounds relieved when he tells her, and he knows that she knows that she's called him back.  
  
The entire flight he had the feeling like someone was pressing their fingers against his windpipe. He didn't know if it was dread or fear or turbulence or the hope building in his gut, but all day long he had to remind himself to breathe.  
  
The air is wet in La Push when he arrives.  
  
When they film the cliff-diving scene, everyone is tense and serious, Kristen standing with Taylor and Kiowa to one side, hands up to shade their eyes from the sky. They are watching the cranes set up a perfect shot for whatever stunt double takes Bella's fall, but he watches Kristen. He hasn't seen her in a month, and from Kiowa's trailer he can see how the hair catches on her mouth, how her lips turn down as she squints. It's not attractive, and her hair looks dry in the wind, her skin pale and her feet covered in sand. She seems somehow awkward, but he knows he's leaning as far forward as he can, hoping to take as much of her in as possible before she sees him, and treats him like a _friend_.  
  
When they call lunch and everyone wanders off to catering, he waits by the rock she ate at during the few days of filming last year. It has a view she likes, and softer sand to stick her feet in. Not that he'd been around, but she told him where it was, and he remembered. She used to tell him a lot more things, but he's remembered them all. Maybe one day he'll get to demonstrate just how much trivia he knows about her. He thinks he knows more than that, thinks he understands her, but she never reveals enough to confirm anything.  
  
"How did you know I'd be here?" She reaches the rock at the same time that he does, holding a plastic bag with a happy face and HAVE A NICE DAY on the side.  
  
"Vampire senses." He sits down and rests his elbows on his thighs, his forearms dangling between his legs. He forgot to take his shoes off, and there is sand in his left sock.  
  
She sits down next to him and puts her bag in the sand. He peeks inside; sushi.  
  
"I missed you," she says and it's _hi_ , it's _thanks_ , it's _I know why you're here_.  
  
He smiles. "I missed you too." When he says it, all that he means is he missed her. A lot.  
  
"Do you want to have dinner with me  tonight?" She asks, mildly, and he doesn't know what to think before he tells her yes.  
  
It's not like he expected a date date, so when it turns out he can't tell if she asked him out or not, he starts to freak out a little bit. If she'd been anyone else he'd have thought... but it definitely doesn't seem like anything when she calls him and tells her to come pick her up already, she's hungry.  
  
They eat Mexican food with their hands at a hole in the wall restaurant she picks because it's the only restaurant in the area authentic enough to have flautas and horchata. She collects every kind of sauce while he pays, and they do taste tests, double dipping everything because "I'm not sick, are you?" Their faces burn with heat and to cool off he orders them some beer.  
  
After dinner they sit in her car on a turnout on the 101 somewhere north of Kalaloch, looking at the ocean. He's twisting the tip of his cigarette carefully between two fingers, dumping the tobacco onto the top of the script she had in the backseat. When the cigarette paper is wrinkled and it is empty, he squints at it and begins to break up the weed.  
  
They smoke three spliffs, listening to talk radio turned low so that they don't have to make conversation. He's aware of a sort of tension, but he's too comfortable just _being_ with her again to care. They mirror each other's silence until the sun begins to go down, and she starts the car.  
  
"You don't want to see the sunset?" Girls usually did.  
  
"Nah." She twists her head to look at him, her hair sticking to her cheek. She looks so much better to him as a brunette, so much better when she's smiling, like now. "I like driving when I'm high."  
  
He laughs. "Me too. It's like a space ship."  
  
She makes a spaceship noise, or at least he can tell that's what it's supposed to be. He laughs through his grin, and turns off the radio.  
  
"Tell me about what happened," he says. Even though she's driving, she reaches out blindly for his hand. Without question, he takes it in both of his, rubs her palm with his thumbs.  
  
The smile she gives him makes his heart roll over.  
  
There's a story Rob knows about a young boy who save a dying snake. He nurses it back to health, cares for it, and the two become the best of friends. The boy trusts him implicitly, but one day it betrays him and bites without warning. Dying, the boy asks, "Why did you do that? I cared for you when no one else would!" and the snake says, "You knew what I was when you picked me up."  
  
The point is, he's ready for her to break his heart.


End file.
